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Like the other post to this parent (which described the memory requirements of a full-color scanned page), I work on a Java app that can easily require more than 64 MB of memory. MegaMek is a game played on a full color a hex-based map. The standard map size is 16 hexes by 17 hexes, and each hex is 84 pixels by 72 pixels (with 4 byte color/alpha depth), for a total of 6,580,224 bytes per map (call it 6.25 MiB). If the players select 4 sheet by 4 sheet map, the game requires 100 MiB of memory for the map alone.

Yeah, I guess that us poor dumb programmers could be more efficient with our coding, and not draw the entire map sheet in off-screen memory, and just draw what's needed to show the current window of the map to the player, but we're still working on getting all the basic rules implemented, and are putting off performance optimazations like this until later. Similarly, we've recently implemented a zoom function that complicates the process of calculating what has to be drawn somewhat, and adds to the memory requirements (we're rather not scale each image on each draw, and caching the images multiplies our memory requirements).

The point I'm trying to make is that some problem domains that just don't fit into 64 MiB of memory, and many of those pertain to desktop apps (like games and/or image manipulation programs).

Funny... gator...

Here's another excellent password utility, from Bruce Schneier called Password Safe, which stores the passwords in a file and uses Blowfish to encrypt it. Very lightweight (requires only the executable -- no installation) but has the features everybody needs.

When I had a disc that was failing under warranty, I used a bootable hard disk wiping utility as the final step before sending the drive back.

Autoclave is the one I used. It is quite nice, fits on a bootable floppy. I felt better sending my drive in for warranty replacement after using this program.

Also see:
UBCSwipe
Darik's Boot and Nuke

Jim

I've done it with other types of binary files, but never tried with firmware.

Anyone try this?

If you are worried about securely storing passwords, you should check out this application: KeePass. My Favorite feature is that you can randomly generate a password, copy and past the password (which is displayed as asterisks) from the application to the destination, and never know what your password is. It works natively in windows and runs on Wine in Linux.

Here's the windows equivalent: KeePass

Submit a patch or a feature request. You're capable enough from what I've read. If no one posts even a requests in such a forum, there's no way to reasonably expect the code to get changed.

I completely agree, after spending countless hours sifting through log files, tweaking triggers to help reduce the amount of false positives, the IDS is not the complete answer.

An IDS is only so efficient, you need to first really understand your network before deploying, and even after deployment, this is only the beginning.

We have been using Darknets, or honeypots for sometime, an excellent combination of tools, see Snort, ACID (Analysis Console for Intrusion Databases

As said before and in the article, this is a sophisticated set of tools and you need to understand your network, or you will find yourself chasing ghosts, Enter the Darknet (Honeypot).

Combined with the other tools, we have been using Honeyd , an excellent honeypot, simple to get up an going and very configurable.

Snort.org has an excellent howto documentation to get the IDS up an going, then you can add the honeypot.

It can be downright humorous how quickly you will begin to capture useful information. In addition, adding scripts to interact with the traffic will allow you to keep the user busy while you are collecting data, or Tarpitting the traffic making the port "sticky" dragging the connections, another good one would be LeBrea.

If you have any interest in network security, or simply want to monitor your home network, you need to take a look at darknet, or any of the other tools mentioned.

I have thought about this for a bit now.

You are right that this is unfair.
It is just ripe for abuse.

If you see something that you don't like at +4 Informative. Instead of modding it -1 Overrated which could later be removed in M2 you could mod it +1 funny and prevent any further karma increases for that user.

A few people with mod points could prop up posts they didn't like with +1 Funnys and mod them down until the account is basically muted as a Troll.

(This is made difficult by the current protections of limited and basically random gaining of mod points, but if you really had a grudge and a few friends you could do it.)

Now I know that the purpose of the +1 Funny != Karma restriction is to encourage serious useful discussion, but I think protections need to be put in place to prevent it's abuse.

One very simple way to do this is to make Funny moderations not count for the purpose of allowing further moderation.

So you could end up with posts marked +N Funny to an arbitrary value of N, while only allowing karma destructive mods to be applied if there was additional karma building moderations.

So if it is modded +3 Funny it can not be modded -4 Troll, but if it is at +3 Funny +1 UnderRated it could be modded to +2 Underated. (All this assumes it is posted at an initial value of 1 for a registered account.)

Frankly this is not the place to discuss this.
Slashdot has a feature request area that is the proper location for your complaint. You will have to register there to make the request, and I don't know what that entails, but if this is important to you then put forth the effort.

For Mac OS X, I recommend the following free software:
Audacity . Audio Editor.
Colloquy. An IRC Client.
Cyberduck. FTP client.
Fugu. FTP client.
Shiira. Web browser written in Cocoa.
Camino. Web browser.
Firefox. Web Browser.
Mozilla . Browser/E-mail/Composer/Address/Chat.
Thunderbird. E-mail Client.
GnuPG for Mac. GNU Privacy Guard for Mac = Encryption for the people!

Give the kids choices. All of the above are free as in freedom as well as gratis.

Its a bit hard to tell from the page whether this makes full use of the GPUs per box in the cluster like Chromium

They do also mention that it can render entirely in software over the network at 20FPS - not bad considering that each fram portion of the data has to pass across presumable 2 machines before it is passed to the display!

Download the source, ./configure, etc. PowerPC is supported.

Wishlist

A used Mac notebook running OSX so that I can start work on the Mac OSX port right away.

Unless you use Swing, which is a critical component for writing desktop apps unless you resort to non-standard libraries.

Sun, swallow your pride for just a second and deprecate Swing (yes, ALL of it!). Then adopt SWT instead and you'll be doing the community a huge service. It's no surprise that the only usable desktop Java apps I'm aware of use SWT. In addition to Eclipse which most here are probably aware of, take a look at Azureus for example. I'd love to see someone port Azureus to Swing as an exercise to demonstrate just how bad Swing really is in comparison.

Why do another vi when the ultimate vi based editor is here ?

application that we developed back in '98 for Java 1.1/1.2, on both Windows and Linux using Sun's 1.4

...what the Hell is FLAC...?

In addition to the MacOS X specific sites, this might be useful: Open Kiosk.

Regarding "open source, plugins or thrid [sic] party". iTunes can play any audio that can be played in QuickTime, and QuickTime supports plug-ins. There is an open-source Ogg Vorbis plug-in, for example.

Regarding "proper audio connectors". True that it only has a mini-jack for analog audio, but it also has a digital audio port, which is certainly "proper" and what you'll want to use if you want high fidelity.

Just for the record, you could also plug headphones into the mini-jack, though I find it somewhat unlikely that people would be interested in plugging there head directly into a power outlet, which is the impression you would get with this device.....

While I haven't seen a plugin for MPC on iTunes, I do use a plugin that works with iTunes to play Vorbis files, which appears to be quite popular here on Slashdot (I don't really see the difference, but hey, that's beside the point). It only works on the Mac, however.

Vorbis Quicktime/iTunes plugin

In addition to the MacOS X specific sites, this might be useful: Open Kiosk.

Other Sierra adventure game projects on the net include reverse-engineered versions of old Sierra engines such as AGI and SCI, editors for both engines such as AGI Studio and SCI Studio, and fan-made games such as AGI Quest I and Space Quest: The Lost Chapter.

This happened on the POPFile Wiki. Eventually I solved it by changing the code of the Wiki itself to have an allowed list of URLs (actually a set of regexps). If someone adds a page which uses a new URL that isn't covered it wont show up when the page is displayed and the user has to email me to get that specific URL added.

It's a bit of an administrative burden, but stopped people messing up our Wiki with irrelevant links to some site in China.

John.

The link on the website points to mmdsetup.exe--what's wrong with that? Please don't tell me it cannot run on ScummVM after unpacking... Just-- don't tell me!

If some of you don't already know, ScummVM (available at scummvm.sf.net) is "a 'virtual machine' for several classic graphical point-and-click adventure games. It is designed to run: Adventure Soft's Simon the Sorcerer 1 and 2; Revolution's Beneath A Steel Sky, Broken Sword 1 and Broken Sword 2; Flight of the Amazon Queen; and games based on LucasArts' SCUMM (Script Creation Utility for Maniac Mansion) system. SCUMM is used for many games, including Monkey Island, Day of the Tentacle, Sam and Max and more. Compatibility with supported games is continually improving, so check back often." -- from www.scummvm.sourceforge.net.

With ScummVM you can play Maniac Mansion (original), Maniac Mansion (enhanced), Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders (original), Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders (enhanced), Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders (256 - FmTowns), Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (256), Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (256 - FmTowns), Loom, Loom (256 - FmTowns), The Secret of Monkey Island (EGA), Passport to Adventure (Indy3, Monkey and Loom demos), Loom (256 color CD version), The Secret of Monkey Island (VGA Floppy), The Secret of Monkey Island (VGA CD), The Secret of Monkey Island (Alternative VGA CD), The Secret of Monkey Island (Sega CD), Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's revenge, Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's revenge (DOS Demo), Indiana Jones 4 and the Fate of Atlantis, Indiana Jones 4 and the Fate of Atlantis (Demo), Putt-Putt Joins The Parade (DOS Demo), Putt-Putt Joins The Parade (DOS), Putt-Putt Goes To The Moon (DOS Demo), Putt-Putt Goes To The Moon (DOS), Putt-Putts Fun Pack,

The link on the website points to mmdsetup.exe--what's wrong with that? Please don't tell me it cannot run on ScummVM after unpacking... Just-- don't tell me!

If some of you don't already know, ScummVM (available at scummvm.sf.net) is "a 'virtual machine' for several classic graphical point-and-click adventure games. It is designed to run: Adventure Soft's Simon the Sorcerer 1 and 2; Revolution's Beneath A Steel Sky, Broken Sword 1 and Broken Sword 2; Flight of the Amazon Queen; and games based on LucasArts' SCUMM (Script Creation Utility for Maniac Mansion) system. SCUMM is used for many games, including Monkey Island, Day of the Tentacle, Sam and Max and more. Compatibility with supported games is continually improving, so check back often." -- from www.scummvm.sourceforge.net.

With ScummVM you can play Maniac Mansion (original), Maniac Mansion (enhanced), Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders (original), Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders (enhanced), Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders (256 - FmTowns), Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (256), Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (256 - FmTowns), Loom, Loom (256 - FmTowns), The Secret of Monkey Island (EGA), Passport to Adventure (Indy3, Monkey and Loom demos), Loom (256 color CD version), The Secret of Monkey Island (VGA Floppy), The Secret of Monkey Island (VGA CD), The Secret of Monkey Island (Alternative VGA CD), The Secret of Monkey Island (Sega CD), Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's revenge, Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's revenge (DOS Demo), Indiana Jones 4 and the Fate of Atlantis, Indiana Jones 4 and the Fate of Atlantis (Demo), Putt-Putt Joins The Parade (DOS Demo), Putt-Putt Joins The Parade (DOS), Putt-Putt Goes To The Moon (DOS Demo), Putt-Putt Goes To The Moon (DOS), Putt-Putts Fun Pack,

The link on the website points to mmdsetup.exe--what's wrong with that? Please don't tell me it cannot run on ScummVM after unpacking... Just-- don't tell me!

The network is nice, I admit I use it myself but its not new technology. This also is not a new network because I've been using it for a while. I don't know why this site decides to post this to the top of the page when other P2P news far more important is not posted.

Did you know MUTE developer Jason Rohrer will be speaking at the 5th International Free Software Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil?

View some slides Slide1
and notes Slide2

Lets also not forget that Shareaza is open source now.

The network is nice, I admit I use it myself but its not new technology. This also is not a new network because I've been using it for a while. I don't know why this site decides to post this to the top of the page when other P2P news far more important is not posted.

Did you know MUTE developer Jason Rohrer will be speaking at the 5th International Free Software Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil?

View some slides Slide1
and notes Slide2

Lets also not forget that Shareaza is open source now.

Sounds like Konspire2b, but not open source, and only for windows.

Besides, the guy who wrote konspire is also the guy who wrote MUTE, so I think he knows a thing or two about P2P.

Sounds like Konspire2b, but not open source, and only for windows.

Besides, the guy who wrote konspire is also the guy who wrote MUTE, so I think he knows a thing or two about P2P.

Ah, so Apple didn't just make a huge contribution to OpenAL?

What diffrence does it make what happens to OpenAL when there's audiere?>

Anyway, Konquerer is GPL'd so it's not like apple really had a choice. It was either continue to be beholden to Microsoft and IE:mac, write their own web browser from scratch which would make no money, or pay for some improvements in a already existing browser which would make them no money.

Apple is adding this to OSS project that help them much more then they help the community. There's nothing wrong with that, it's fine. But it's not like their some "Champion" of OSS, like IBM with Eclipse or SUN with Open Office.

A 1MB audio file that's 1 minute long is 140kbps, whether it's VBR, ABR or CBR -- all they change are the bitrate distribution. VBR would be damn cool if it could make a file higher bitrate without increasing it's size :o

Testing, yes; you're right of course (although they're typically a little more involved than that -- just because it works on 10, 100 or 1000 WAV's doesn't mean it'll work on the 1001th), but test suites are just another part of software; they tend to mature over time. Like all file formats you're going to dedicate GB's of data to, the more mature option is typically the best for just this reason :)

AAC is indeed one of the audio standards which appear in the MP4 container format; MP4 can contain just about anything, including MP3, AAV, and any other format you care to put into it -- it's rather like AVI or OGG in this regard. MP4's lossless format is known as ALS; it's as yet unfinished, however. Being based on LPAC, it should perform pretty well; FLAC's lossless codec comparison page however shows LPAC performing significantly better than ALAC. Without source and specifications, though, all of this is just speculation -- maybe they just did a really bad job of implimenting it ;)

That's stupid - there's no such thing as black box code.

Nonsense! Of course there is, and in fact you can find it right here.

Obviously adding any black-box code to a system with open source won't accomplish anything. I remeber hacking the OptimalJ by Compuware. It is a big application written in Java (so you can assume it to be Open Source - for instance use this), but it had some black-box module that has checked licenses and operating system. We were at the time OptimalJ licensee (so NO unlawful activity when copyright is considered) but wanted to run OptimalJ on FreeBSD (was 2xfaster than on Linux and 4xfaster than on Windows). Point was that this black-box module checked the operating system and made impossible for the program to start if it was not linux or windows. So we simply did circumvent the whole black-box module.
In my personal opinion if you want such regulations to have any effect both OpenSource and posession, use and selling of compilers/decompilers should be controlled by the state the same way as heavy arms/munitions. In particular it should be banned to own/use/sell/produce compilation tools, exept in the case you are a professional company having obtained a suitable license.

Don't forget about JamVM!

GNU Classpath
GCJ/GIJ
Kaffe VM
Jikes Java compiler
SableVM
Java-GTK
Documents about how to compile and use QTJava and KDEJava

What else do we need? How does all this not play well with Free software? We've got the tools, why not use them?

Certainly it dosen't help that Compile is written using shell scripts rather than a more modern language. Hopefully it won't need to get too smart.

I started my own source-based install system before discovering zeroinstall and decided it was the real future of end-user software installs (wonder if P2P installs will get added into it?).

Source-based systems will likely evolve into distrabution managers used by distro developers only, that will used to setup master reference systems for end-users using zeroinstall.

my 2 cents.

I don't understand why the open source community is so anti-Java. Now after reading that sentence don't think I'm leading into a rant against that anti-Java mentality. Instead, I'm pleading ignorance here -- I just want someone to enlighten me :)

Even though the Java API & implementation are controlled by Sun, why should that discourage OSS developers from writing software in it? If you can still release your source code freely while the Java VM remains free for download, what's the harm?

Case in point, Azureus is a great BitTorrent client/server written in Java, and released under the GPL. As its source code is made freely available, it receives the same feedback as other GPL'd programs receive developed for an open source language.

And just recently, I've found Java useful for controlling my Lego Mindstorms robots (see Lejos) to making my own peer-to-peer program (working on it in my spare time... coming soon, hopefully). I'll be releasing all the source code for these projects online, under the GPL -- isn't that what really matters?

Again, I'm just ignorant. Please enlighten me! :)

- sm

I don't understand why the open source community is so anti-Java. Now after reading that sentence don't think I'm leading into a rant against that anti-Java mentality. Instead, I'm pleading ignorance here -- I just want someone to enlighten me :)

Even though the Java API & implementation are controlled by Sun, why should that discourage OSS developers from writing software in it? If you can still release your source code freely while the Java VM remains free for download, what's the harm?

Case in point, Azureus is a great BitTorrent client/server written in Java, and released under the GPL. As its source code is made freely available, it receives the same feedback as other GPL'd programs receive developed for an open source language.

And just recently, I've found Java useful for controlling my Lego Mindstorms robots (see Lejos) to making my own peer-to-peer program (working on it in my spare time... coming soon, hopefully). I'll be releasing all the source code for these projects online, under the GPL -- isn't that what really matters?

Again, I'm just ignorant. Please enlighten me! :)

- sm

Personally, I'm more interested in letting iTunes support Ogg Vorbis.

You can do this by installing the Ogg Vorbis quicktime components. iTunes will use them to play Vorbis files. It's a little slow to load and unfortunately doesn't work with streams, but it's great for accessing your Vorbis files from within the interface.

Sounds like ROX AppDir as well. Personally, I don't know why everything isn't moving to something similar. It makes things so easy. :)

...a standard that doesn't have a lot of real-world support? I mean, if you go onto one of the p2p systems, you find that everything is still pretty much mp3. So there is some incentive there for Apple to provide mp3 support. Why would they want to promote an alternative standard that they aren't selling, though?

First, I really doubt that Apple cares what's going on in "one of the p2p systems", at least officially. :)

Second, at least two iPod competitors support ogg vorbis: the Rio Karma and the iRiver iHP (and the Samsung YH-920 is supposed to as well, but it's for sale yet). While the iPod is certainly dominant in the marketplace, that's no reason not to add more features. More to the point, saying "we're number one, let's stop innovating" is in the category of "famous last words", and I suspect that Apple is smart enough to know this. They might want to cover their bases in case the ogg vorbis format gains popularity. Or they might want to add support in case too many other players start supporting ogg vorbis and it begins to look like the iPod lacks something. It's better to be ahead of the curve in every way, you know?

Are these strong motivations for adding ogg vorbis support? Not really. On the other hand, consider the costs of adding ogg vorbis support. It's not patent-encumbered or controlled by a competitor (e.g. WMA), so from that angle there's not much to it. It's a matter of weighing a some R&D costs against making the list of features longer and that much more impressive. Also note that some related problems have already been solved, like the lack of a floating point processer (these folks have info). While Apple wouldn't use GPLed code directly (I assume), they can take advantage of the ideas and algorithms.

Why? It's already been done (FAQ 3.3).

Note that the Ogg player runs about 80% real-time. That could have to do with the overhead of having Linux running, or it could be due to the iPod honestly not having enough horsepower. Apple has chosen not to support Ogg for one reason or another (or likely a whole slew of reasons).

--
Evan

But real men SURELY don't have clippy tell them how to use the editor.

I don't see that 'feature' in emacs ;)

Even though Apple themselves may not support Vorbis audio, ever, the community will implement it if it is possible. Go check out iPodLinux. It has much promise in delivering the things that the Apple stock firmware fails at so miserably.

They might argue that, but that would be like arguing "you don't need a car, your kiddie pedal-kart is just not good enough". Seriously, grown-ups use words. It boggles my mind that some people honestly think the computer interface equivalent of a "see spot run" picture book is somehow more desirable than a grown up verbal conversation with your computer.

I blame microsoft - they produced a command line that _really_ sucked, but that is most people's only experience of the command line, so people think "command lines suck", instead of what they should be thinking: "*Microsoft* command lines suck".

Actually, to digress a little, CLI and GUI are not mutually exclusive. If you're lucky enough to have used Common Lisp CLIM, you'll know what I mean, or you could have a play with Mozilla XMLTerm, which is somewhat similar.

You should look at rox which advocates and uses an appdir apporach in unices (which is actually really neat and effective, they even provide ROX-LIB which shows how it would work with repect to libraries.

True, libraries would still have to be in some common area, but at least would have all relevant resources entirely contained in a subdirectory.

OSX does some impure global resources stuff and some things (particularly Apple packages) are installer based and contribute to tossing things all over the place...

Did anybody (rio guy, poster?) at least bother to google this? iPods CAN play ogg: (ok under Linux) and not far out of alpha it seems.

So if somebody managed to get ogg to decode after loading up linux on an iPod, which is not exactly well documented hardware, Apple would not be?

I thought that the Linux on iPod project managed to get Ogg playback working ?

Sure - it may not be at 100 percent realtime, but I bet Apple engineers (vs the noble folks who had to reverse engineer the iPod) could manage.

That why i am using adzapper. I can't stand Microsoft ads anymore.